Saturday the Tigers received one of the possible two players they’re entitled to from the Oakland Athletics which will begin to complete the trade for Mike Fiers that happened earlier this month.
According to reports, the Tigers received 23-year-old right-hander Nolan Blackwood from the A’s who Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com name the ’30th best prospect’ in the Oakland organization.
Most sidearm and submarine pitchers rely heavily on their deception to help improve what usually is below-average stuff. That’s not the case with Blackwood, a wiry, 6-foot-5 right-handed sidearmer whom the A’s drafted in the 14th round last in 2016 after three seasons of closing games at Memphis. He became the first player from the 2016 Draft class to reach a full-season level, moving up to Class A Beloit from Short Season Vermont roughly a month into his career, and then served as Class A Advanced Stockton’s closer for all of ’17 before an impressive showing in the Arizona Fall League.
Blackwood’s velocity is atypical compared to hurlers with a similar arm slot, as he’ll sit at 91-93 mph with heavy sink that results in extreme ground-ball contact but few whiffs. He pairs it with an average breaking ball as well as a changeup, both of which play up on account of his tremendous deception, although he’ll need to develop the latter in order to be successful against lefties. He does an excellent job of keeping the ball in the park and enters 2018 having allowed just three home runs in 83 1/3 career innings.
With an ideal fastball-breaking ball combo that helped him limit right-handed hitters to a .167 average in the California League, Blackwood could be a fast riser through the Minor Leagues.
A side-arm pitcher? I’m a little intrigued by that considering the fits they use to give me when I played MLB The Show. I’m not really intrigued his organizational prospect ranking though but what are you gonna do? People are probably going to be expecting a top three prospect in return for Fiers when in reality he’s a guy, given his age and history really shouldn’t net you much, which in this case proves to be true. In fact the only thing that’ll really piss me off about this deal is if Chris Ilitch opts to take the money instead of the second player.
Detroit has yet to decide whether to take another PTBNL in Fiers deal or cash.
— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) August 18, 2018
Anyways, as far as Blackwood shapes out, the Athletics took him in the 14th round back in 2016. Since then he’s most recently been pitching in Double-A where he’s managed a 4.08 ERA/3.51 FIP with a 8.15 K/9, 2.72 BB/9 in 53 innings (39 appearances). This also includes an ‘excellent’ 62.5 percent groundball rate according to MLBTR.
